Bribery more common in India than Pakistan: US journal

ISLAMABAD: Corruption, black money and bribery is increasing with each passing day. These evils are considered as a hindrance on the growth of world economy and they lay the foundations of other social evils like human trafficking, drug smuggling and terrorism activities.

According to statistics from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), approximately $1.5 trillion worth of bribe is exchanged around the world. This is approximately 5 percent of the global GDP.

According to the findings mentioned in the recently published American journal ‘Foreign Policy, Sweden sits on top in terms of transparency and less bribery while Pakistan ranks on 166th position. The situation in India is far more worse as India sits on 178 which is 12 scales worse than Pakistan.

According to Alexandra Wrage, President and Founder of the anti-bribery organisation TRACE International, “You can’t have narco-trafficking without bribery, human trafficking without bribery, or even terrorism without bribery.”

It is to be noted that even though strict anti-bribery laws have been introduced and improved in many countries but governments around the world still cannot tackle the issue to its fullest.

This is itself proved in the study that on a scale of 1 to 100,higher numbers indicates higher bribery risks, China, despite initiating a huge anti-corruption drive in Beijing, sits with score of 66.Even the United States saw an increase in bribery going from a score of 27 in 2014 to a score of 34 in 2016.

Bribery has become common even in regular office work but in the last few years there has been a shift in business strategy where companies are recognizing that bribery is bad and harmful for the society.Even then, still a lot has to be done to remove bribery completely, the report suggests.